How does that make sense? Here is how it rationally works, voluntarily.
If you like what I post about and want to follow me, great!
If I like what you post about and I want to follow you, great!
That's how it works for me. I don't try to use reciprocal psychological pressure to get followers or votes.
Do you want to see or upvote content you're not interested in?
If I don't like what the content you post about, then I am not really going to follow you, as I don't want a Feed that is full of posts I'm not even interested in. I also don't follow people who mostly Resteem content I'm not interested in, as I don't want to have Resteems "polluting" my Feed when I'm not even interested in the content.
You don't need to follow everyone that follows you. You don't need to upvote everyone that upvotes you.
People don't need to follow you for you to follow them. People don't need to vote for you to vote for them.
I evaluate and judge the content for the content, and follow people for the content.
Go ahead and follow people for whatever reason you want. But only keeping a follow if they follow you back, or only voting if someone votes back, indicates you didn't really want to follow someone or upvote content out of appreciation of their content/post/work. It shows you were only willing to give a follow or upvote if you got it back from the same person. This would create a closed loop of feedback interaction.
Do you think acting like that will produce a free-flowing interactive platform?
The interactions would be limited to direct reciprocity in 1:1 exchanges of follow-4-follow or vote-4-vote. Whether it's everyone doing it, or 2 people, the principle of the issue still applies.
Reciprocity should be applied in terms of general behavior on the platform. If we want to get upvotes on the platform, we should upvote others on the platform. You can like other people's posts, but they don't like yours. Other people can like your posts, but you don't like theirs.
You can't force someone to follow you if they aren't interested in your content, just like you can't force someone to upvote your content if they aren't interested in the type of content you post about.
Does it really seem reasonable that you should stop following someone if you are actually interested in what they post about? No. Then it's also not reasonable to expect someone to follow you simply because you follow them.
Lets drop the follow-4-follow mindset, and build a following of people who actually like the content we post, and where we follow people with content we like. That's how engagement will happen based on what we want and like to talk about. There is no engagement from so-called "followers" who aren't even interested in the content and are only followers because of follow-4-follow. Many just say "good post" or quick generic comments in order to get upvotes for fake support.
Don't you want real followers that actually follow your content because they like it?
Don't you want to give people a follow if you are really interested in following their content?
Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.
Please consider supporting me as a Steem Witness by voting for me at the bottom of the Witness page; or just click on the upvote button if I am in the top 50